SB Nation Reacts: Confidence in the Cubs is still low, and thoughts on how baseball is played in 2021

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send out questions to the most plugged-in Chicago Cubs fans, and fans across the country. Sign up here to join Reacts.

According to the most recent SB Nation Reacts survey 14 percent of Cubs fans are confident the team is headed in the right direction. That’s down from 15 percent last week, and that number should not surprise you. This number has been at 15 percent or lower for four weeks, and only Rockies fans (11 percent) are less confident in their team than Cubs fans.

That level of confidence in the team probably explains fans’ feelings toward the team’s overall success this season. 68 percent of fans expect the Cubs to win between 76 and 85 games this year.

Earning those wins this season will likely require dominant pitching and lots of home runs — two things the Cubs aren’t doing too much of right now. The game today is more dependent than ever on home runs and strikeouts. However, fans in the Reacts survey don’t necessarily see this as an improvement to baseball. More than two thirds of fans in the most recent survey think there are too many strikeouts in the average game.

To adjust to parades of pitchers throwing 95-plus, more hitters are approaching at-bats willing to risk a strikeout in order to hit a home run and thus not need multiple successful at bats to score in an inning. But only 17 percent of fans believe more home runs make the strikeout rate worthwhile. On top of that, fewer than 10 percent of people surveyed like this hitting approach at all.

One thing is clear — fans want more runners on the basepaths, though how to accomplish this is still up for debate. Nearly everyone responding to the most recent Reacts survey think the game would improve with more singles, doubles and triples.

The evolution of the game in recent years have made it hard to watch for some fans in an abstract way. However, another trend recently has made baseball much harder to watch in a very real way.

More than a third of fans around the country said they are unable to watch their favorite team on TV. Two-thirds of fans said in order to watch their favorite team, they would need to pay an extra fee.

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